Raymond Chandler
Guns at Cyrano's(1936)

Contents

ONE

Ted Carmady liked the rain; liked the feel of it, the sound of it, the smell
of it. He got out of his LaSalle coupe and stood for a while by the side
entrance to the Carondelet, the high collar of his blue suede ulster tickling
his ears, his hands in his pockets and a limp cigarette sputtering between his
lips. Then he went in past the barbershop and the drugstore and the perfume shop
with its rows of delicately lighted bottles, ranged like the ensemble in the
finale of a Broadway musical.

He rounded a gold-veined pillar and got into an elevator with a cushioned
floor.

"'Lo Albert. A swell rain. Nine."

The slim tired-looking kid in pale blue and silver held a white-gloved hand
against the closing doors, said: "Jeeze, you think I don't know your floor,
Mister Carmady?"

He shot the car up to nine without looking at his signal light, whooshed the
doors open, then leaned suddenly against the cage and closed his eyes.

Carmady stopped on his way out, flicked a sharp glance from bright brown
eyes. "What's the matter, Albert? Sick?"

He got out of the car and started along the corridor. Softly, under his
breath, he said: "Sucker .

The running man almost knocked him off his feet. He rounded the turn fast,
lurched past Carmady's shoulder, ran for the elevator.

'Down!" He slammed through the closing doors.

Carmady saw a white set face under a pulled-down hat that was wet with rain;
two empty black eyes set very close. Eyes in which there was a peculiar stare he
had seen before. A load of dope.

The car dropped like lead. Carmady looked at the place where it had been for
a long moment, then he went on down the corridor and around the turn.

He saw the girl lying half in and half out of the open door of 914.

She lay on her side, in a sheen of steel-gray lounging pajamas, her cheek
pressed into the nap of the hall carpet, her head a mass of thick corn-blond
hair, waved with glassy precision. Not a hair looked out of place. She was
young, very pretty, and she didn't look dead.

Carmady slid down beside her, touched her cheek. It was warm. He lifted the
hair softly away from her head and saw the bruise.

"Sapped." His lips pressed back against his teeth.

He picked her up in his arms, carried her through a short hallway to the
living room of a suite, put her down on a big velour davenport in front of some
gas logs.

She lay motionless, her eyes shut, her face bluish behind the make-up. He
shut the outer door and looked through the apartment, then went back to the
hallway and picked up something that gleamed white against the baseboard. It was
a bonehandled .22 automatic, sevenshot. He sniffed it, dropped it into his
pocket and went back to the girl.

He took a big hammered-silver flask out of his inside breast pocket and
unscrewed the top, opened her mouth with his fingers and poured whiskey against
her small white teeth. She gagged and her head jerked out of his hand. Her eyes
opened. They were deep blue, with a tint of purple. Light came into them and the
light was brittle.

He lit a cigarette and stood looking down at her. She moved a little more.
After a while she whispered: "I like your whiskey. Could I have a little
more?"

He got a glass from the bathroom, poured whiskey into it. She sat up very
slowly, touched her head, groaned. Then she took the glass out of his hand and
put the liquor down with a practised flip of the wrist.

"I still like it," she said. "Who are you?"

She had a deep soft voice. He liked the sound of it. He said: "Ted
Carmady. I live down the hall in 937."

"I got a dizzy spell, I guess."

"Uh-huh. You got sapped, angel." His bright eyes looked at her
probingly. There was a smile tucked to the corners of his lips.

Her eyes got wider. A glaze came over them, the glaze of a protective enamel.

He said: "I saw the guy. He was snowed to the hairline. And here's your
gun."

He took it out of his pocket, held it on the flat of his hand. "I
suppose that makes me think up a bedtime story," the girl said slowly.

"Not for me. If you're in a jam, I might help you. It all depends."

"Depends on what?" Her voice was colder, sharper.

"On what the racket is," he said softly. He broke the magazine from
the small gun, glanced at the top cartridge. "Coppernickel, eh? You know
your ammunition, angel."

"Do you have to call me angel?"

"I don't know your name."

He grinned at her, then walked over to a desk in front of the windows, put
the gun down on it. There was a leather photo frame on the desk, with two photos
side by side. He looked at them casually at first, then his gaze tightened. A
handsome dark woman and a thin blondish cold-eyed man whose high stiff collar,
large knotted tie and narrow lapels dated the photo back many years. He stared
at the man.

The girl was talking behind him. "I'm Jean Adrian. I do a number at
Cyrano's, in the floor show."

He turned and looked at her. She lifted her head slowly. Something that might
have been fear showed in her deep blue eyes.

"Yes. They've been dead for years," she said dully. "Next
question?"

He went quickly back to the davenport and stood in front of her.
"Okey," he said thinly. "I'm nosey. So what? This is my town. My
dad used to run it. Old Marcus Carmady, the People's Friend; this is my hotel. I
own a piece of it. That snowedup hoodlum looked like a life-taker to me. Why
wouldn't I want to help out?"

The blond girl stared at him lazily. "I still like your whiskey,"
she said. "Could I-"

"Take it from the neck, angel. You get it down faster," he grunted.

She stood up suddenly and her face got a little white. "You talk to me
as if I was a crook," she snapped. "Here it is, if you have to know. A
boy friend of mine has been getting threats. He's a fighter, and they want him
to drop a fight. Now they're trying to get at him through me. Does that satisfy
you a little?"

Carmady picked his hat off a chair, took the cigarette end out of his mouth
and rubbed it out in a tray. He nodded quietly, said in a changed voice: "I
beg your pardon." He started towards the door.

The giggle came when he was halfway there. The girl said behind him softly:
"You have a nasty temper. And you've forgotten your flask."

He went back and picked the flask up. Then he bent suddenly, put a hand under
the girl's chin and kissed her on the lips.

"To hell with you, angel. I like you," he said softly.

He went back to the hallway and out. The girl touched her lips with one
finger, rubbed it slowly back and forth. There was a shy smile on her face.

TWO

Tony Acosta, the bell captain, was slim and dark and slight as a girl, with
small delicate hands and velvety eyes and a hard little mouth. He stood in the
doorway and said: "Seventh row was the best I could get, Mister Carmady.
This Deacon Werra ain't bad and Duke Targo's the next light heavy champ."

Carmady said: "Come in and have a drink, Tony." He went over to the
window, stood looking out at the rain. "If they buy it for him," he
added over his shoulder.

"Well-just a short one, Mister Carmady."

The dark boy mixed a highball carefully at a tray on an imitation Sheraton
desk. He held the bottle against the light and gauged his drink carefully,
tinkled ice gently with a long spoon, sipped, smiled, showing small white teeth.

The rain beat against the glass. The thick drops flattened out and washed
down the pane in tiny waves.

Carmady said: "He's a bum. A bum with color and looks, but still a
bum."

Tony sighed deeply. "I wisht I was goin'. It's my night off, too."

Carmady turned slowly and went over to the desk, mixed a drink. Two dusky
spots showed in his cheeks and his voice was tired, drawling.

"So that's it. What's stopping you?"

"I got a headache,"

"You're broke again," Carmady almost snarled.

The dark boy looked sidewise under his long lashes, said nothing.

Carmady clenched his left hand, unclenched it slowly. His eyes were sullen.

"Just ask Carmady," he sighed. "Good old Carmady. He leaks
dough. He's soft. Just ask Carmady. Okey, Tony, take the ducat back and get a
pair together."

He reached into his pocket, held a bill out. The dark boy looked hurt.

"Jeeze, Mister Carmady, I wouldn't have you think-"

"Skip it! What's a fight ticket between pals? Get a couple and take your
girl. To hell with this Targo."

Tony Acosta took the bill. He watched the older man carefully for a moment.
Then his voice was very softly, saying: "I'd rather go with you, Mister
Carmady. Targo knocks them over, and not only in the ring. He's got a peachy
blonde right on this floor, Miss Adrian, in 914."

Carmady stiffened. He put his glass down slowly, turned it on the top of the
desk. His voice got a little hoarse.

"He's still a bum, Tony. Okey, I'll meet you for dinner, in front of
your hotel at seven."

"Jeeze, that's swell, Mister Carmady."

Tony Acosta went out softly, closed the outer door without a sound.

Carmady stood by the desk, his fingertips stroking the top of it, his eyes on
the floor. He stood like that for a long time.

"Carmady, the All-American sucker," he said grimly, out loud.
"A guy that plays with the help and carries the torch for stray broads.
Yeah."

He finished his drink, looked at his wrist watch, put on his hat and the blue
suede raincoat, went out. Down the corridor in front of 914 he stopped, lifted
his hand to knock, then dropped it without touching the door.

He went slowly on to the elevators and rode down to the street and his car.

The Tribune office was at Fourth and Spring. Carmady parked around the
corner, went in at the employees' entrance and rode to the fourth floor in a
rickety elevator operated by an old man with a dead cigar in his mouth and a
rolled magazine which he held six inches from his nose while he ran the
elevator.

On the fourth floor big double doors were lettered City Room. Another old man
sat outside them at a small desk with a call box.

Carmady tapped on the desk, said: "Adams. Carmady calling."

The old man made noises into the box, released a key, pointed with his chin.

Carmady went through the doors, past a horseshoe copy desk, then past a row
of small desks at which typewriters were being banged. At the far end a lanky
red-haired man was doing nothing with his feet on a pulled-out drawer, the back
of his neck on the back of a dangerously tilted swivel chair and a big pipe in
his mouth pointed straight at the ceiling.

When Carmady stood beside him he moved his eyes down without moving any other
part of his body and said around the pipe: "Greetings, Carmady. How's the
idle rich?"

Carmady said: "How's a glance at your clips on a guy named Courtway?
State Senator John Myerson Courtway, to be precise."

Adams put his feet on the floor. He raised himself erect by pulling on the
edge of his desk. He brought his pipe down level, took it out of his mouth and
spit into a wastebasket. He said: "That old icicle? When was he ever news?
Sure." He stood up wearily, added: "Come along, Uncle," and
started along the end of the room.

They went along another row of desks, past a fat girl in smudged make-up who
was typing and laughing at what she was writing.

They went through a door into a big room that was mostly six-foot tiers of
filing cases with an occasional alcove in which there was a small table and a
chair.

Adams prowled the filing cases, jerked one out and set a folder on a table.

"Park yourself. What's the graft?"

Carmady leaned on the table on an elbow, scuffed through a thick wad of
cuttings. They were monotonous, political in nature, not front page. Senator
Courtway said this and that on this and that matter of public interest,
addressed this and that meeting, went or returned from this and that place. It
all seemed very dull.

He looked at a few halftone cuts of a thin, white-haired man with a blank,
composed face, deep set dark eyes in which there was no light or warmth. After a
while he said: "Got a print I could sneeze? A real one, I mean."

Adams sighed, stretched himself, disappeared down the line of file walls. He
came back with a shiny black and white photograph, tossed it down on the table.

"You can keep it," he said. "We got dozens. The guy lives
forever. Shall I have it autographed for you?"

Carmady looked at the photo with narrow eyes, for a long time. "It's
right," he said slowly. "Was Courtway ever married?"

"Not since I left off my diapers," Adams growled. "Probably
not ever. Say, what'n hell's the mystery?"

Carmady smiled slowly at him. He reached his flask out, set it on the table
beside the folder. Adams' face brightened swiftly and his long arm reached.

"Then he never had a kid," carmady said.

Adams leered over the flask. "Well-not for publication, I guess. If I'm
any judge of a mug, not at all." He drank deeply, wiped his lips, drank
again.

THREE

The fat man put his face close to Carmady's face. He said with a wheeze:
"You think it's fixed, neighbor?"

"Yeah. For Werra."

"How much says so?"

"Count your poke."

"I got five yards that want to grow."

"Take it," Carmady said tonelessly, and kept on looking at the back
of a corn-blond head in a ringside seat. A white wrap with white fur was below
the glassily waved hair. He couldn't see the face. He didn't have to.

The fat man blinked his eyes and got a thick wallet carefully out of a pocket
inside his vest. He held it on the edge of his knee, counted out ten
fifty-dollar bills, rolled them up, edged the wallet back against his ribs.

"You're on, sucker," he wheezed. "Let's see your dough."

Carmady brought his eyes back, reached out a flat pack of new hundreds,
riffled them. He slipped five from under the printed band, held them out.

"Boy, this is from home," the fat man said. He put his face close
to Carmady's face again. "I'm Skeets O'Neal. No little pGwders, huh?"

Carmady smiled very slowly and pushed his money into the fat man's hand.
"You hold it, Skeets. I'm Carmady. Old Marcus Carmady's son. I can shoot
faster than you can run-and fix it afterwards."

The fat man took a long hard breath and leaned back in his seat. Tony Acosta
stared soft-eyed at the money in the fat man's pudgy tight hand. He licked his
lips and turned a small embarrassed smile on Carmady.

The first five had been anybody's fight. The big blond boy, Duke Targo,
wasn't trying. The dark one, Deacon Werra, a powerful, loose-limbed Polack with
bad teeth and only two cauliflower ears, had the physique but didn't know
anything but rough clinching and a giant swing that started in the basement and
never connected. He had been good enough to hold Targo off so far. The fans
razzed Targo a good deal.

When the stool swung back out of the ring Targo hitched at his black and
silver trunks, smiled with a small tight smile at the girl in the white wrap. He
was very good-looking, without a mark on him. There was blood on his left
shoulder from Werra's nose.

The bell rang and Werra charged across the ring, slid off Targo's shoulder,
got a left hook in. Targo got more of the hook than was in it. He piled back
into the ropes, bounced out, clinched.

Carmady smiled quietly in the darkness.

The referee broke them easily. Targo broke clean, Werra tried for an uppercut
and missed. They sparred for a minute. There was waltz music from the gallery.
Then Werra started a swing from his shoetops. Targo seemed to wait for it, to
wait for it to hit him. There was a queer strained smile on his face. The girl
in the white wrap stood up suddenly.

Werra's swing grazed Targo's jaw. It barely staggered him. Targo lashed a
long right that caught Werra over the eye. A left hook smashed Werra's jaw, then
a right cross almost to the same spot.

The dark boy went down on his hands and knees, slipped slowly all the way to
the floor, lay with both his gloves under him. There were catcalls as he was
counted out.

The fat man struggled to his feet, grinning hugely. He said: "How you
like it, pal? Still think it was a set piece?

"It came unstuck," Carmady said in a voice as toneless as a police
radio.

Carmady sat motionless, watched the auditorium empty. The fighters and their
handlers had gone down the stairs under the ring. The girl in the white wrap had
disappeared in the crowd. The lights went out and the barnlike structure looked
cheap, sordid.

Tony Acosta fidgeted, watching a man in striped overalls picking up papers
between the seats.

Carmady stood up suddenly, said: "I'm going to talk to that bum, Tony.
Wait outside in the car for me."

He went swiftly up the slope to the lobby, through the remnants of the
gallery crowd to a gray door marked "No Admittance." He went through
that and down a ramp to another door marked the same way. A special cop in faded
and unbuttoned khaki stood in front of it, with a bottle of beer in one hand and
a hamburger in the other.

Carmady flashed a police card and the cop lurched out of the way without
looking at the card. He hiccoughed peacefully as Carmady went through the door,
then along a narrow passage with numbered doors lining it. There was noise
behind the doors. The fourth door on the left had a scribbled card with the name
"Duke Targo" fastened to the panel by a thumbtack.

Carmady opened it into the heavy sound of a shower going, out of sight.

In a narrow and utterly bare room a man in a white sweater was sitting on the
end of a rubbing table that had clothes scattered on it. Carmady recognized him
as Targo's chief second.

He said: "Where's the Duke?"

The sweatered man jerked a thumb towards the shower noise. Then a man came
around the door and lurched very close to Carmady. He was tall and had curly
brown hair with hard gray color in it. He had a big drink in his hand. His face
had the flat glitter of extreme drunkenness. His hair was damp, his eyes
bloodshot. His lips curled and uncurled in rapid smiles without meaning. He said
thickly: "Scramola, umpchay."

Carmady shut the door calmly and leaned against it and started to get his
cigarette case from his vest pocket, inside his open blue raincoat. He didn't
look at the curly-haired man at all.

The curly-haired man lunged his free right hand up suddenly, snapped it under
his coat, out again. A blue steel gun shone dully against his light suit. The
glass in his left hand slopped liquor.

"None of that!" he snarled.

Carmady brought the cigarette case out very slowly, showed it in his hand,
opened it and put a cigarette between his lips. The blue gun was very close to
him, not very steady. The hand holding the glass shook in a sort of jerky
rhythm.

Carmady said loosely: "You ought to be looking for trouble."

The sweatered man got off the rubbing table. Then he stood very still and
looked at the gun. The curly-haired man said: "We like trouble. Frisk him,
Mike."

The sweatered man said: "I don't want any part of it, Shenvair. For
Pete's sake, take it easy. You're lit like a ferry boat."

Carmady knocked the gun aside almost casually, with the hand that held his
cigarette case. The curly-haired man snapped his head around again. Carmady slid
close to him, sank a stiff punch in his stomach, holding the gun away with his
forearm. The curly-haired man gagged, sprayed liquor down the front of Carmady's
raincoat. His glass shattered on the floor. The blue gun left his hand and went
over in a corner. The sweatered man went after it.

The noise of the shower had stopped unnoticed and the blond fighter came out
toweling himself vigorously. He stared openmouthed at the tableau.

Carmady said: "I don't need this any more."

He heaved the curly-haired man away from him and laced his jaw with a hard
right as he went back. The curly-haired man staggered across the room, hit the
wall, slid down it and sat on the floor.

The sweatered man snatched the gun up and stood rigid, watching Carmady.

Carmady got out a handkerchief and wiped the front of his coat, while Targo
shut his large well-shaped mouth slowly and began to move the towel back and
forth across his chest. After a moment he said: "Just who the hell may you
be?"

Carmady said: "I used to be a private dick. Carmady's the name. I think
you need help."

Targo's face got a little redder than the shower had left it.
"Why?"

"I heard you were supposed to throw it, and I think you tried to. But
Werra was too lousy. You couldn't help yourself. That means you're in a
jam."

Targo said very slowly: "People get their teeth kicked in for saying
things like that."

The room was very still for a moment. The drunk sat up on the floor and
blinked, tried to get his feet under him, and gave it up.

The sweatered man laughed harshly. Then he broke the gun and slid the shells
out of it, dropped the gun on the floor. He went to the door, went out, slammed
the door shut.

Targo looked at the shut door, looked back at Carmady. He said very slowly:
"What did you hear?"

"Your friend Jean Adrian lives in my hotel, on my floor. She got sapped
by a hood this afternoon. I happened by and saw the hood running away, picked
her up. She told me a little of what it was all about."

Targo had put on his underwear and socks and shoes. He reached into a locker
for a black satin shirt, put that on. He said: "She didn't tell me."

"She wouldn't-before the fight."

Targo nodded slightly. Then he said: "If you know Benny, you may be all
right. I've been getting threats. Maybe it's a lot of birdseed and maybe it's
some Spring Street punter's idea of how to make himself a little easy dough. I
fought my fight the way I wanted to. Now you can take the air, mister."

He put on high-waisted black trousers and knotted a white tie on his black
shirt. He got a white serge coat trimmed with black braid out of the locker, put
that on. A black and white handkerchief flared from the pocket in three points.

Carmady stared at the clothes, moved a little towards the door and looked
down at the drunk.

"Okey," he said. "I see you've got a bodyguard. It was just an
idea I had. Excuse it, please."

He went out, closed the door gently, and went back up the ramp to the lobby,
out to the street. He walked through the rain around the corner of the building
to a big graveled parking lot.

The lights of a car blinked at him and his coupe slid along the wet gravel
and pulled up. Tony Acosta was at the wheel.

Carmady got in at the right side and said: "Let's go out to Cyrano's and
have a drink, Tony."

"Jeeze, that's swell. Miss Adrian's in the floor show there. You know,
the blonde I told you about."

Carmady said: "I saw Targo. I kind of liked him-but I didn't like his
clothes."

FOUR

Gus Neishacker was a two-hundred-pound fashion plate with very red cheeks and
thin, exquisitely penciled eyebrows-eyebrows from a Chinese vase. There was a
red carnation in the lapel of his wide-shouldered dinner jacket and he kept
sniffing at it while he watched the headwaiter seat a party of guests. When
Carmady and Tony Acosta came through the foyer arch he flashed a sudden smile
and went to them with his hand out.

Gus Neishacker shook hands with Tony without looking at him. He said:
"Let's see, the last time you dropped in-"

"She left town," Carmady said. "We'll sit near the ring but
not too near. We don't dance together."

Gus Neishacker jerked a menu from under the headwaiter's arm and led the way
down five crimson steps, along the tables that skirted the oval dance floor.

They sat down. Carmady ordered rye highballS and Denver sandwiches.
Neishacker gave the order to a waiter, pulled a chair out and sat down at the
table. He took a pencil out and made triangles on the inside of a match cover.

"Yeah. Well do us a favor, will you? See it stops right here. Benny
likes this boy. He wouldn't let him get hurt. He'd put protection all around
him-real protection-if he thought that threat stuff was anything but some
pool-hall bum's idea of a very funny joke. Benny never backs but one boxfighter
at a time, and he picks them damn careful."

Carmady lit a cigarette, blew smoke from a corner of his mouth, said quietly:
"It's none of my business, but I'm telling you it's screwy. I have a nose
for that sort of thing."

Gus Neishacker starcd at him a minute, then shrugged. He said: "I hope
you're wrong," stood up quickly and walked away among the tables. He bent
to smile here and there, and speak to a customer.

Carmady nodded, didn't say anything. The waiter put their drinks and
sandwiches on the table, went away. The band on the stage at the end of the oval
floor blared out a long chord and a slick, grinning mc. slid out on the stage
and put his lips to a small open mike.

The floor show began. A line of half-naked girls ran out under a rain of
colored lights. They coiled and uncoiled in a long sinuous line, their bare legs
flashing, their navels little dimples of darkness in soft white, very nude
flesh.

A hard-boiled redhead sang a hard-boiled song in a voice that could have been
used to split firewood. The girls came back in black tights and silk hats, did
the same dance with a slightly different exposure.

The music softened and a tall high-yaller torch singer drooped under an amber
light and sang of something very far away and unhappy, in a voice like old
ivory.

Carmady sipped his drink, poked at his sandwich in the dim light. Tony Acosta
s hard young face was a small tense blur beside him.

The torch singer went away and there was a little pause and then suddenly all
the lights in the place went out except the lights over the music racks of the
band and little pale amber lights at the entrances to the radiating aisles of
booths beyond the tables.

There were squeals in the thick darkness. A single white spot winked on, high
up under the roof, settled on a runway beside the stage. Faces were chalk-white
in the reflected glare. There was the red glow of a cigarette tip here and
there. Four tall black men moved in the light, carrying a white mummy case on
their shoulders. They came slowly, in rhythm, down the runway. They wore white
Egyptian headdresses and loincloths of white leather and white sandals laced to
the knee. The black smoothness of their limbs was like black marble in the
moonlight.

They reached the middle of the dance floor and slowly upended the mummy case
until the cover tipped forward and fell and was caught. Then slowly, very
slowly, a swathed white figure tipped forward and fell-slowly, like the last
leaf from a dead tree. It tipped in the air, seemed to hover, then plunged
towards the floor under a shattering roll of drums.

The light went off, went on. The swathed figure was upright on the floor,
spinning, and one of the blacks was spinning the opposite way, winding the white
shroud around his body. Then the shroud fell away and a girl was all tinsel and
smooth white limbs under the hard light and her body shot through the air
glittering and was caught and passed around swiftly among the four black men,
like a baseball handled by a fast infield.

Then the music changed to a waltz and she danced among the black men slowly
and gracefully, as though among four ebony pillars, very close to them but never
touching them.

The act ended. The applause rose and fell in thick waves. The light went out
and it was dark again, and then all the lights went up and the girl and the four
black men were gone.

Duke Targo stood applauding violently at the entrance to one of the radiating
booth aisles. There was a loose grin on his face. He looked as if he might have
had a few drinks.

An arm came down over Carmady's shoulder. A hand planted itself in the ash
tray at his elbow. He smelled Scotch in heavy gusts. He turned his head slowly,
looked up at the liquor-shiny face of Shenvair, Duke Targo's drunken bodyguard.

Carmady smiled slowly, moved his chair a little. Tony Acosta stared at
Shenvair round-eyed, his little mouth a thin line.

"Blackface, Mister Shenvair. Not real smokes. I liked it."

"And who the hell cares what you like?" Shenvair wanted to know.

Carmady smiled delicately, laid his cigarette down on the edge of a plate. He
turned his chair a little more.

"Still think I want your job, Shenvair?"

"Yeah. I owe you a smack in the puss too." He took his hand out of
the ash tray, wiped it off on the tablecloth. He doubled it into a fist.
"Like it now?"

A waiter caught him by the arm, spun him around.

"You lost your table, sir? This way."

Shenvair patted the waiter on the shoulder, tried to put an arm around his
neck. "Swell, let's go nibble a drink. I don't like these people."

They went away, disappeared among the tables.

Carmady said: "To hell with this place, Tony," and stared moodily
towards the band stage. Then his eyes became intent.

A girl with corn-blond hair, in a white wrap with a white fur collar,
appeared at the edge of the shell, went behind it, reappeared nearer. She came
along the edge of the booths to the place where Targo had been standing. She
slipped in between the booths there, disappeared.

Carmady said: "To hell with this place. Let's go Tony," in a low
angry voice. Then very softly, in a tensed tone: "No-wait a minute. I see
another guy I don't like."

The man was on the far side of the dance floor, which was empty at the
moment. He was following its curve around, past the tables that fringed it. He
looked a little different without his hat. But he had the same flat white
expressionless face, the same close-set eyes. He was youngish, not more than
thirty, but already having trouble with his bald spot. The slight bulge of a gun
under his left arm was barely noticeable. He was the man who had run away from
Jean Adrian's apartment in the Carondelet.

He reached the aisle into which Targo had gone, into which a moment before
Jean Adrian had gone. He went into it.

Carmady said sharply: "Wait here, Tony." He kicked his chair back
and stood up.

Somebody rabbit-punched him from behind. He swiveled, close to Shenvair's
grinning sweaty face.

"Back again, pal," the curly-haired man chortled, and hit him on
the jaw.

It was a short jab, well placed for a drunk. It caught Carmady off balance,
staggered him. Tony Acosta came to his feet snarling, catlike. Carmady was still
rocking when Shenvair let go with the other fist. That was too slow, too wide.
Carmady slid inside it, uppercut the curly-haired man's nose savagely, got a
handful of blood before he could get his hand away. He put most of it back on
Shenvair's face.

Shenvair wobbled, staggered back a step and sat down on the floor, hard. He
clapped a hand to his nose.

"Keep an eye on this bird, Tony," Carmady said swiftly.

Shenvair took hold of the nearest tablecloth and yanked it. It came off the
table. Silver and glasses and china followed it to the floor. A man swore and a
woman squealed. A waiter ran towards them with a livid, furious face.

Carmady almost didn't hear the two shots.

They were small and flat, close together, a small-caliber gun. The rushing
waiter stopped dead, and a deeply etched white line appeared around his mouth as
instantly as though the lash of a whip had cut it there.

A dark woman with a sharp nose opened her mouth to yell and no sound came
from her. There was the instant when nobody makes a sound, when it almost seems
as if there will never again be any sound-after the sound of a gun. Then Carmady
was running.

He bumped into people who stood up and craned their necks. He reached the
entrance to the aisle into which the whitefaced man had gone. The booths had
high walls and swing doors not so high. Heads stuck out over the doors, but no
one was in the aisle yet. Carmady charged up a shallow carpeted slope, at the
far end of which booth doors stood wide open.

Legs in dark cloth showed past the doors, slack on the floor, the knees
sagged. The toes of black shoes were pointed into the booth.

Carmady shook an arm off, reached the place.

The man lay across the end of a table, his stomach and one side of his face
on the white cloth, his left hand dropped between the table and the padded seat.
His right hand on top of the table didn't quite hold a big black gun, a .45 with
a cut barrel. The bald spot on his head glistened under the light, and the oily
metal of the gun glistened beside it.

Blood leaked from under his chest, vivid scarlet on the white cloth, seeping
into it as into blotting paper.

Duke Targo was standing up, deep in the booth. His left arm in the white
serge coat was braced on the end of the table. Jean Adrian was sitting down at
his side. Targo looked at Carmady blankly, as if he had never seen him before.
He pushed his big right hand forward.

A small white-handled automatic lay on his palm.

"I shot him," Targo said, He pulled a gun on us and I shot
him."

Jean Adrian was scrubbing her hands together on a scrap of handkerchief. Her
face was strained, cold, not scared. Her eyes were dark.

"I shot him," Targo said. He threw the small gun down on the cloth.
It bounced, almost hit the fallen man's head. "Let's-let's get out of
here."

Carmady put a hand against the side of the sprawled man's neck, held it there
a second or two, took it away.

"He's dead," he said. "When a citizen drops a redhot-that's
news."

Jean Adrian was staring at him stiff-eyed. He flashed a smile at her, put a
hand against Targo's chest, pushed him back.

"Sit down, Targo. You're not going any place."

Targo said: "Well-okey. I shot him, see."

"That's all right," Carmady said. "Just relax."

People were close behind him now, crowding him. He leaned back against the
press of bodies and kept on smiling at the girl's white face.

FIVE

Benny Cyrano was shaped like two eggs, a little one that was his head on top
of a big one that was his body. His small dapper legs and feet in patent-leather
shoes were pushed into the kneehole of a dark sheenless desk. He held a corner
of a handkerchief tightly between his teeth and pulled against it with his left
hand and held his right hand out pudgily in front of him, pushing against the
air. He was saying in a voice muffled by the handkerchief: "Now wait a
minute, boys. Now wait a minute."

There was a striped built-in sofa in one corner of the office, and Duke Targo
sat in the middle of it, between two Headquarters dicks. He had a dark bruise
over one cheekbone, his thick blond hair was tousled and his black satin shirt
looked as if somebody had tried to swing him by it.

One of the dicks, the gray-haired one, had a split lip. The young one with
hair as blond as Targo's had a black eye. They both looked mad, but the blond
one looked madder.

Carmady straddled a chair against the wall and looked sleepily at Jean
Adrian, near him in a leather rocker. She was twisting a handkerchief in her
hands, rubbing her palms with it. She had been doing this for a long time, as if
she had forgotten she was doing it. Her small firm mouth was angry.

Gus Neishacker leaned against the closed door smoking. "Now wait a
minute, boys," Cyrano said. "If you didn't get tough with him, he
wouldn't fight back. He's a good boy-the best I ever had. Give him a
break."

Blood dribbled from one corner of Targo's mouth, in a fine thread down to his
jutting chin. It gathered there and glistened. His face was empty,
expressionless.

Carmady said coldly: "You wouldn't want the boys to stop playing
blackjack pinochle, would you, Benny?"

"It's lying around somewhere, I guess," Carmady said. "Maybe
we could take it away from you," the blond dick snarled.

"Maybe you could do a fan dance, copper. You might be all kinds of a
smart guy for all I'd know."

The blond dick started to get up. The older one said: "Leave him be.
Give him six feet. If he steps over that, we'll take the screws out of
him."

Carmady and Gus Neishacker grinned at each other. Cyrano made helpless
gestures in the air. The girl looked at Carmady under her lashes. Targo opened
his mouth and spat blood straight before him on the blue carpet.

Something pushed against the door and Neishacker stepped to one side, opened
it a crack, then opened it wide. McChesney came in.

McChesney was a lieutenant of detectives, tall, sandy-haired, fortyish, with
pale eyes and a narrow suspicious face. He shut the door and turned the key in
it, went slowly over and stood in front of Targo.

"Plenty dead," he said. "One under the heart, one in it. Nice
snap shooting. In any league."

"When you've got to deliver you've got to deliver," Targo said
dully.

"Make him?" the gray-haired dick asked his partner, moving away
along the sofa.

McChesney nodded. "Torchy Plant. A gun for hire. I haven't seen him
round for all of two years. Tough as an ingrowing toenail with his right load. A
bindle punk."

"He'd have to be that to throw his party in here," the grayhaired
dick said.

McChesney's long face was serious, not hard. "Got a permit for the gun,
Targo?"

Targo said: "Yes. Benny got me one two weeks ago. I been getting a lot
of threats."

"Listen, Lieutenant," Cyrano chirped, "some gamblers try to
scare him into a dive, see? He wins nine straight fights by knockouts so they
get a swell price. I told him he should take one at that maybe."

Targo put his hand back into his right hip pocket and jerked a handkerchief
out quickly, stuck his finger through it like a gun barrel.

"That handkerchief in the pocket?" McChesney asked. "With the
gun?"

Targo's big reddish face clouded a little. He nodded. McChesney leaned
forward casually and twitched the handkerchief from his hand. He sniffed at it,
unwrapped it, sniffed at it again, folded it and put it away in his own pocket.
His face said nothing.

"What did he say, Targo?"

"He said: 'I got a message for you, punk, and this is it.' Then he went
for the gat and it stuck a little in the clip. I got mine out first."

McChesney smiled faintly and leaned far back, teetering on his heels. His
faint smile seemed to slide off the end of his long nose. He looked Targo up and
down.

"Yeah," he said softly. "I'd call it damn nice shooting with a
twenty-two. But you're fast for a big guy . . . Who got these threats?"

"I did," Targo said. "Over the phone."

"Know the voice?"

"It might have been this same guy. I'm not just positive."

McChesney walked stiff-legged to the other end of the office, stood a moment
looking at a hand-tinted sporting print. He came back slowly, drifted over to
the door.

"A guy like that don't mean a lot," he said quietly, "but we
got to do our job. The two of you will have to come downtown and make
statements. Let's go."

He went out. The two dicks stood up, with Duke Targo between them. The
gray-haired one snapped: "You goin' to act nice, bo?"

Targo sneered: "If I get to wash my face."

They went out. The blond dick waited for Jean Adrian to pass in front of him.
He swung the door, snarled back at Carmady: "As for you-nuts!"

Carmady said softly: "I like them. It's the squirrel in me,
copper."

Gus Neishacker laughed, then shut the door and went to the desk.

"I'm shaking like Benny's third chin," he said. "Let's all
have a shot of cognac."

He poured three glasses a third full, took one over to the striped sofa and
spread his long legs out on it, leaned his head back and sipped the brandy.

Carmady stood up and downed his drink. He got a cigarette out and rolled it
around in his fingers, staring at Cyrano's smooth white face with an
up-from-under look.

"How much would you say changed hands on that fight tonight?" he
asked softly. "Bets."

Cyrano blinked, massaged his lips with a fat hand. "A few grand. It was
just a regular weekly show. It don't listen, does it?"

Carmady put the cigarette in his mouth and leaned over the desk to strike a
match. He said: "If it does, murder's getting awfully cheap in this
town."

Cyrano didn't say anything. Gus Neishacker sipped the last of his brandy and
carefully put the empty glass down on a round cork table beside the sofa. He
stared at the ceiling, silently.

After a moment Carmady nodded at the two men, crossed the room and went out,
closed the door behind him. He went along a corridor off which dressing rooms
opened, dark now. A curtained archway let him out at the back of the stage.

In the foyer the headwaiter was standing at the glass doors, looking out at
the rain and the back of a uniformed policeman. Carmady went into the empty
cloakroom, found his hat and coat, put them on, came out to stand beside the
headwaiter.

He said: "I guess you didn't notice what happened to the kid I was
with?"

The headwaiter shook his head and reached forward to unlock the door.

"There was four hundred people here-and three hundred scrammed before
the law checked in. I'm sorry."

Carmady nodded and went out into the rain. The uniformed man glanced at him
casually. He went along the street to where the car had been left. It wasn't
there. He looked up and down the street, stood for a few moments in the rain,
then walked towards Melrose.

After a little while he found a taxi.

SIX

The ramp of the Carondelet garage curved down into semidarkness and chilled
air. The dark bulks of stalled cars looked ominous against the whitewashed
walls, and the single droplight in the small office had the relentless glitter
of the death house.

A big Negro in stained overalls came out rubbing his eyes, then his face
split in an enormous grin.

"No, it ain't, Mistuh Carmady. I been all around wipin' off and yours
ain't here aytall."

Carmady said woodenly: "I lent it to a pal. He probably wrecked it .

He flicked a half-dollar through the air and went back up the ramp to the
side street. He turned towards the back of the hotel, came to an alleylike
street one side of which was the rear wall of the Carondelet. The other side had
two frame houses and a four-story brick building. Hotel Blaine was lettered on a
round milky globe over the door.

Carmady went up three cement steps and tried the door. It was locked. He
looked through the glass panel into a small dim empty lobby. He got out two
passkeys; the second one moved the lock a little. He pulled the door hard
towards him, tried the first one again. That snicked the bolt far enough for the
loosely fitted door to open.

He went in and looked at an empty counter with a sign "Manager"
beside a plunger bell. There was an oblong of empty numbered pigeonholes on the
wall. Carmady went around behind the counter and fished a leather register out
of a space under the top. He read names back three pages, found the boyish
scrawl: "Tony Acosta," and a room number in another writing.

He put the register away and went past the automatic elevator and upstairs to
the fourth floor.

The hallway was very silent. There was weak light from a ceiling fixture. The
last door but one on the left-hand side had a crack of light showing around its
transom. That was the door-411. He put his hand out to knock, then withdrew it
without touching the door.

The doorknob was heavily smeared with something that looked like blood.

Carmady's eyes looked down and saw what was almost a pool of blood on the
stained wood before the door, beyond the edge of the runner.

His hand suddenly felt clammy inside his glove. He took the glove off, held
the hand stiff, clawlike for a moment, then shook it slowly. His eyes had a
sharp strained light in them.

He got a handkerchief out, grasped the doorknob inside it, turned it slowly.
The door was unlocked. He went in.

He looked across the room and said very softly: "Tony . oh, Tony."

Then he shut the door behind him and turned a key in it, still with the
handkerchief.

There was light from the bowl that hung on three brass chains from the middle
of the ceiling. It shone on a made-up bed, some painted, light-colored
furniture, a dull green carpet, a square writing desk of eucalyptus wood.

Tony Acosta sat at the desk. His head was slumped forward on his left arm.
Under the chair on which he sat, between the legs of the chair and his feet,
there was a glistening brownish pool.

Carmady walked across the room so rigidly that his ankles ached after the
second step. He reached the desk, touched Tony Acosta's shoulder.

"Tony," he said thickly, in a low, meaningless voice. "My God,
Tony!"

Tony didn't move. Carmady went around to his side. A blood-soaked bath towel
glared against the boy's stomach, across his pressed-together thighs. His right
hand was crouched against the front edge of the desk, as if he was trying to
push himself up. Almost under his face there was a scrawled envelope.

Carmady pulled the envelope towards him slowly, lifted it like a thing of
weight, read the wandering scrawl of words.

The line trailed over the edge of the paper, became a blot there. The pen was
on the floor. There was a bloody thumbprint on the envelope.

Carmady folded it meticulously to protect the print, put the envelope in his
wallet. He lifted Tony's head, turned it a little towards him. The neck was
still warm; it was beginning to stiffen. Tony's soft dark eyes were open and
they held the quiet brightness of a cat's eyes. They had that effect the eyes of
the new-dead have of almost, but not quite, looking at you.

Carmady lowered the head gently on the outstretched left arm. He stood laxly,
his head on one side, his eyes almost sleepy. Then his head jerked back and his
eyes hardened.

He stripped off his raincoat and the suitcoat underneath, rolled his sleeves
up, wet a face towel in the basin in the corner of the room and went to the
door. He wiped the knobs off, bent down and wiped up the smeared blood from the
floor outside.

He rinsed the towel and hung it up to dry, wiped his hands carefully, put his
coat on again. He used his handkerchief to open the transom, to reverse the key
and lock the door from the outside. He threw the key in over the top of the
transom, heard it tinkle inside.

He went downstairs and out of the Hotel Blame. It still rained. He walked to
the corner, looked along a tree-shaded block. His car was a dozen yards from the
intersection, parked carefully, the lights off, the keys in the ignition. He
drew them out, felt the seat under the wheel. It was wet, sticky. Carmady wiped
his hand off, ran the windows up and locked the car. He left it where it was.

Going back to the Carondelet he didn't meet anybody. The hard slanting rain
still pounded down into the empty streets.

SEVEN

There was a thin thread of light under the door of 914. Carmady knocked
lightly, looking up and down the hall, moved his gloved fingers softly on the
panel while he waited. He waited a long time. Then a voice spoke wearily behind
the wood of the door.

"Yes? What is it?"

"Carmady, angel. I have to see you. It's strictly business."

The door clicked, opened. He looked at a tired white face, dark eyes that
were slatelike, not violet-blue. There were smudges under them as though mascara
had been rubbed into the skin. The girl's strong little hand twitched on the
edge of the door.

"You," she said wearily. "It would be you. Yes ... Well, I've
simply got to have a shower. I smell of policemen."

"Fifteen minutes?" Carmady asked casually, but his eyes were very
sharp on her face.

She shrugged slowly, then nodded. The closing door seemed to jump at him. He
went along to his own rooms, threw off his hat and coat, poured whiskey into a
glass and went into the bathroom to get ice water from the small tap over the
basin.

He drank slowly, looking out of the windows at the dark breadth of the
boulevard. A car slid by now and then, two beams of white light attached to
nothing, emanating from nowhere.

He finished the drink, stripped to the skin, went under a shower. He dressed
in fresh clothes, refilled his big flask and put it in his inner pocket, took a
snub-nosed automatic out of a suitcase and held it in his hand for a minute
staring at it. Then he put it back in the suitcase, lit a cigarette and smoked
it through.

He got a dry hat and a tweed coat and went back to 914.

The door was almost insidiously ajar. He slipped in with a light knock, shut
the door, went on into the living room and looked at Jean Adrian.

She was sitting on the davenport with a freshly scrubbed look, in loose
plum-colored pajamas and a Chinese coat. A tendril of damp hair drooped over one
temple. Her small even features had the cameo-like clearness that tiredness
gives to the very young.

Carmady said: "Drink?"

She gestured emptily. "I suppose so."

He got glasses, mixed whiskey and ice water, went to the davenport with them.

"Are they keeping Targo on ice?"

She moved her chin an eighth of an inch, staring into her glass.

"He cut loose again, knocked two cops halfway through the wall. They
love that boy.',

Carmady said: "He has a lot to learn about cops. In the morning the
cameras will be all set for him. I can think of some nice headlines, such as:
"Well-known Fighter Too Fast for Gunman."

"Sure." He flipped his cigarette case open, held it under her chin.
Her hand fumbled at it and while it still fumbled he said: "When you light
that tell me why you shot him."

Jean Adrian put the cigarette between her lips, bent her head to the match,
inhaled and threw her head back. Color awakened slowly in her eyes and a small
smile curved the line of her pressed lips. She didn't answer.

Carmady watched her for a minute, turning his glass in his hands. Then he
stared at the floor, said: "It was your gun-the gun I picked up here in the
afternoon. Targo said he drew it from his hip pocket, the slowest draw in the
world. Yet he's supposed to have shot twice, accurately enough to kill a man,
while the man wasn't even getting his gun loose from a shoulder holster. That's
hooey. But you, with the gun in a bag in your lap, and knowing the hood, might
just have managed it. He would have been watching Targo."

The girl said emptily: "You're a private dick, I hear. You're the son of
a boss politician. They talked about you downtown. They act a little afraid of
you, of people you might know. Who sicked you on me?"

Carmady said: "They're not afraid of me, angel. They just talked like
that to see how you'd react, if I was involved, so on. They don't know what it's
all about."

"They were told plainly enough what it was all about."

Carmady shook his head. "A cop never believes what he gets without a
struggle. He's too used to cooked-up stories. I think McChesney's wise you did
the shooting. He knows by now if that handkerchief of Targo's had been in a
pocket with a gun."

Her limp fingers discarded her cigarette half-smoked. A curtain eddied at the
window and loose flakes of ash crawled around in the ash tray. She said slowly:
"All right. I shot him. Do you think I'd hesitate after this
afternoon?"

Carmady rubbed the lobe of his ear. "I'm playing this too light,"
he said softly. "You don't know what's in my heart. Something has happened,
something nasty. Do you think the hood meant to kill Targo?"

"I thought so-or I wouldn't have shot a man."

"I think maybe it was just a scare, angel. Like the other one. After all
a night club is a poor place for a getaway."

She said sharply: "They don't do many low tackles on fortyfives. He'd
have got away all right. Of course he meant to kill somebody. And of course I
didn't mean Duke to front for me. He just grabbed the gun out of my hand and
slammed into his act. What did it matter? I knew it would all come out in the
end."

She poked absently at the still burning cigarette in the tray, kept her eyes
down. After a moment she said, almost in a whisper: "Is that all you wanted
to know?"

Carmady let his eyes crawl sidewise, without moving his head, until he could
just see the firm curve of her cheek, the strong line of her throat. He said
thickly: "Shenvair was in on it. The fellow I was with at Cyrano's followed
Shenvair to a hideout. Shenvair shot him. He's dead. He's dead, angel-just a
young kid that worked here in the hotel. Tony, the bell captain. The cops don't
know that yet."

The muffled clang of elevator doors was heavy through the silence. A horn
tooted dismally out in the rain on the boulevard. The girl sagged forward
suddenly, then sidewise, fell across Carmady's knees. Her body was half turned
and she lay almost on her back across his thighs, her eyelids flickering. The
small blue veins in them stood out rigid in the soft skin.

He put his arms around her slowly, loosely, then they tightened, lifted her.
He brought her face close to his own face. He kissed her on the side of the
mouth.

Her eyes opened, stared blankly, unfocused. He kissed her again, tightly,
then pushed her upright on the davenport.

He said quietly: "That wasn't just an act, was it?"

She leaped to her feet, spun around. Her voice was low, tense and angry.

"There's something horrible about you! Something-satanic. You come here
and tell me another man has been killed-and then you kiss me. It isn't
real."

Carmady said dully: "There's something horrible about any man that goes
suddenly gaga over another man's woman."

"I'm not his woman!" she snapped. "I don't even like him-and I
don't like you."

Carmady shrugged. They stared at each other with bleak hostile eyes. The girl
clicked her teeth shut, then said almost violently: "Get out! I can't talk
to you any more. I can't stand you around. Will you get out?"

Carmady said: "Why not?" He stood up, went over and got his hat and
coat.

The girl sobbed once sharply, then she went in light quick strides across the
room to the windows, became motionless with her back to him.

Carmady looked at her back, went over near her and stood looking at the soft
hair low down on her neck. He said: "Why the hell don't you let me help? I
know there's something wrong. I wouldn't hurt you."

The girl spoke to the curtain in front of her face, savagely: "Get out!
I don't want your help. Go away and stay away. I won't be seeing you-ever."

Carmady said slowly: "I think you've got to have help. Whether you like
it or not. That man in the photo frame on the desk there-I think I know who he
is. And I don't think he's dead."

The girl turned. Her face now was as white as paper. Her eyes strained at his
eyes. She breathed thickly, harshly. After what seemed a long time she said:
"I'm caught. Caught. There's nothing you can do about it."

Carmady lifted a hand and drew his fingers slowly down her cheek, down the
angle of her tight jaw. His eyes held a hard brown glitter, his lips a smile. It
was cunning, almost a dishonest smile.

He said: "I'm wrong, angel. I don't know him at all. Good night."

He went back across the room, through the little hallway, opened the door.
When the door opened the girl clutched at the curtain and rubbed her face
against it slowly.

Carmady didn't shut the door. He stood quite still halfway through it,
looking at two men who stood there with guns.

They stood close to the door, as if they had been about to knock. One was
thick, dark, saturnine. The other one was an albino with sharp red eyes, a
narrow head that showed shining snow-white hair under a rain-spattered dark hat.
He had the thin sharp teeth and the drawn-back grin of a rat.

Carmady started to close the door behind him. The albino said: "Hold it,
rube. The door, I mean. We're goin' in."

The other man slid forward and pressed his left hand up and down Carmady's
body carefully. He stepped away, said: "No gat, but a swell flask under his
arm."

The albino gestured with his gun. "Back up, rube. We want the broad,
too."

Carmady said tonelessly: "It doesn't take a gun, Critz. I know you and I
know your boss. If he wants to see me, I'll be glad to talk to him."

He turned and went back into the room with the two gunmen behind him.

Jean Adrian hadn't moved. She stood by the window still, the curtain against
her cheek, her eyes closed, as if she hadn't heard the voices at the door at
all.

Then she heard them come in and her eyes snapped open. She turned slowly,
stared past Carmady at the two gunmen. The albino walked to the middle of the
room, looked around it without speaking, went on into the bedroom and bathroom.
Doors opened and shut. He came back in quiet catlike feet, pulled his overcoat
open and pushed his hat back on his head.

"Get dressed, sister. We have to go for a ride in the rain. Okey?"

The girl stared at Carmady now. He shrugged, smiled a little, spread his
hands.

"That's how it is, angel. Might as well fall in line."

The lines of her face got thin and contemptuous. She said slowly:
"You-You----.' Her voice trailed off into a sibilant, meaningless mutter.
She went across the room stiffly and out of it into the bedroom.

The albino slipped a cigarette between his sharp lips, chuckled with a wet,
gurgling sound, as if his mouth was full of saliva.

"She don't seem to like you, rube."

Carmady frowned. He walked slowly to the writing desk, leaned his hips
against it, stared at the floor.

"She thinks I sold her out," he said dully.

"Maybe you did, rube," the albino drawled.

Carmady said: "Better watch her. She's neat with a gun."

His hands, reaching casually behind him on the desk, tapped the top of it
lightly, then without apparent change of movement folded the leather photo frame
down on its side and edged it under the blotter.

EIGHT

There was a padded arm rest in the middle of the rear seat of the car, and
Carmady leaned an elbow on it, cupped his chin in his hand, stared through the
half-misted windows at the rain. It was thick white spray in the headlights, and
the noise of it on the top of the car was like drum fire very far off.

Jean Adrian sat on the other side of the arm rest, in the corner. She wore a
black hat and a gray coat with tufts of silky hair on it, longer than caracul
and not so curly. She didn't look at Carmady or speak to him.

The albino sat on the right of the thick dark man, who drove. They went
through silent streets, past blurred houses, blurred trees, the blurred shine of
street lights. There were neon signs behind the thick curtains of mist. There
was no sky.

Then they climbed and a feeble arc light strung over an intersection threw
light on a signpost, and Carmady read the name "Court Street."

He said softly: "This is woptown, Critz. The big guy can't be so
dough-heavy as he used to be."

Lights flickered from the albino's eyes as he glanced back. "You should
know, rube."

The car slowed in front of a big frame house with a trellised porch, walls
finished in round shingles, blind, lightless windows. Across the street, a
stencil sign on a brick building built sheer to the sidewalk said: "Paolo
Perrugini Funeral Parlors."

The car swung out to make a wide turn into a gravel driveway. Lights splashed
into an open garage. They went in, slid to a stop beside a big shiny
undertaker's ambulance.

The albino snapped: "All out!"

Carmady said: "I see our next trip is all arranged for."

"Funny guy," the albino snarled. "A wise monkey."

"Uh-uh. I just have nice scaffold manners," Carmady drawled.

The dark man cut the motor and snapped on a big flash, then cut the lights,
got out of the car. He shot the beam of the flash up a narrow flight of wooden
steps in the corner. The albino said: "Up you go, rube. Push the girl ahead
of you. I'm behind with my rod."

Jean Adrian got out of the car past Carmady, without looking at him. She went
up the steps stiffly, and the three men made a procession behind her.

There was a door at the top. The girl opened it and hard white light came out
at them. They went into a bare attic with exposed studding, a square window in
front and rear, shut tight, the glass painted black. A bright bulb hung on a
drop cord over a kitchen table and a big man sat at the table with a saucer of
cigarette butts at his elbow. Two of them still smoked.

A thin loose-lipped man sat on a bed with a Luger beside his left hand. There
was a worn carpet on the floor, a few sticks of furniture, a half-opened
clapboard door in the corner through which a toilet seat showed, and one end of
a big old-fashioned bathtub standing up from the floor on iron legs.

The man at the kitchen table was large but not handsome. He had carroty hair
and eyebrows a shade darker, a square aggressive face, a strong jaw. His thick
lips held his cigarette brutally. His clothes looked as if they had cost a great
deal of money and had been slept in.

He glanced carelessly at Jean Adrian, said around the cigarette: "Park
the body, sister. Hi, Carmady. Gimme that rod, Lefty, and you boys drop down
below again."

The girl went quietly across the attic and sat down in a straight wooden
chair. The man on the bed stood up, put the Luger at the big man's elbow on the
kitchen table. The three gunmen went down the stairs, leaving the door open.

Carmady stood loosely by the kitchen table, with his legs spread wide, his
hands in his overcoat pockets, his head tilted back. His half-closed eyes were
sleepy, very cold.

He said: "Yeah. I helped my dad hang the only rap on you that ever
stuck."

"It didn't stick, mugg. Not with the Court of Appeals."

"Maybe this one will," Carmady said carelessly. "Kidnapping is
apt to be a sticky rap in this state."

Conant grinned without opening his lips. His expression was grimly
good-humored. He said: "Let's not barber. We got business to do and you
know better than that last crack. Sit down-or rather take a look at Exhibit One
first. In the bathtub, behind you. Yeah, take a look at that. Then we can get
down to tacks."

Carmady turned, went across to the clapboard door, pushed through it. There
was a bulb sticking out of the wall, with a key switch. He snapped it on, bent
over the tub.

For a moment his body was quite rigid and his breath was held rigidly. Then
he let it out very slowly, and reached his left hand back and pushed the door
almost shut. He bent farther over the big iron tub.

It was long enough for a man to stretch out in, and a man was stretched out
in it, on his back. He was fully dressed even to a hat, although his head didn't
look as if he had put it on himself. He had thick, gray-brown curly hair. There
was blood on his face and there was a gouged, red-rimmed hole at the inner
corner of his left eye.

He was Shenvair and he was long since dead.

Carmady sucked in his breath and straightened slowly, then suddenly bent
forward still further until he could see into the space between the tub and the
wall. Something blue and metallic glistened down there in the dust. A blue steel
gun. A gun like Shenvair's gun.

Carmady glanced back quickly. The not quite shut door showed him a part of
the attic, the top of the stairs, one of Doll Conant's feet square and placid on
the carpet, under the kitchen table. He reached his arm out slowly down behind
the tub, gathered the gun up. The four exposed chambers had steel-jacketed
bullets in them.

Carmady opened his coat, slipped the gun down inside the waistband of his
trousers, tightened his belt, and buttoned his coat again. He went out of the
bathroom, shut the clapboard door carefully.

Doll Conant gestured at a chair across the table from him: "Sit
down."

Carmady glanced at Jean Adrian. She was staring at him with a kind of rigid
curiosity, her eyes dark and colorless in a stone-white face under the black
hat.

He gestured at her, smiled faintly. "It's Mister Shenvair, angel. He met
with an accident. He's-dead."

The girl stared at him without any expression at all. Then she shuddered
once, violently. She stared at him again, made no sound of any kind.

Carmady sat down in the chair across the table from Conant.

Conant eyed him, added a smoking stub to the collection in the white saucer,
lit a fresh cigarette, streaking the match the whole length of the kitchen
table.

He puffed, said casually: "Yeah, he's dead. You shot him."

Carmady shook his head very slightly, smiled. "No."

"Skip the baby eyes, feller. You shot him. Perrugini, the wop undertaker
across the street, owns this place, rents it out now and then to a right boy for
a quick dust. Incidentally, he's a friend of mine, does me a lot of good among
the other wops. He rented it to Shenvair. Didn't know him, but Shenvair got a
right ticket into him. Perrugini heard shooting over here tonight, took a look
out of his window, saw a guy make it to a car. He saw the license number of the
car. Your car."

Carmady shook his head again. "But I didn't shoot him, Conant."

"Try and prove it ... The wop ran over and found Shenvair halfway up the
stairs, dead. He dragged him up and stuck him in the bathtub. Some crazy idea
about the blood, I suppose. Then he went through him, found a police card, a
private-dick license, and that scared him. He got me on the phone and when I got
the name, I came steaming."

Carmady went on: "I was there, with a kid friend of mine from the hotel.
Just before the shooting this Shenvair threw a punch at me. The kid followed
Shenvair here and they shot each other. Shenvair was drunk and scared and I'll
bet he shot first. I didn't even know the kid had a gun. Shenvair shot him
through the stomach. He got home, died there. He left me a note. I have the
note."

After a moment Conant said: "You killed Shenvair, or hired that boy to
do it. Here's why. He tried to copper his bet on your blackmail racket. He sold
out to Courtway."

Carmady looked startled. He snapped his head around to look at Jean Adrian.
She was leaning forward staring at him with color in her cheeks, a shine in her
eyes. She said very softly: "I'm sorry-angel. I had you wrong."

Carmady smiled a little, turned back to Conant. He said: "She thought I
was the one that sold out. Who's Courtway? Your bird dog, the state
senator?"

Conant's face turned a little white. He laid his cigarette down very
carefully in the saucer, leaned across the table and hit Carmady in the mouth
with his fist. Carmady went over backwards in the rickety chair. His head struck
the floor.

Jean Adrian stood up quietly and her teeth made a sharp clicking sound. Then
she didn't move.

Carmady rolled over on his side and got up and set the chair upright. He got
a handkerchief out, patted his mouth, looked at the handkerchief.

Steps clattered on the stairs and the albino poked his narrow head into the
room, poked a gun still farther in.

The door was shut. The albino's steps died down the stairs. Carmady put his
left hand on the back of the chair and moved it slowly back and forth. His right
hand still held the handkerchief. His lips were getting puffed and darkish. His
eyes looked at the Luger by Conant's elbow.

Conant picked up his cigarette and put it in his mouth. He said: "Maybe
you think I'm going to neck this blackmail racket. I'm not, brother. I'm going
to kill it-so it'll stay killed. You're going to spill your guts. I have three
boys downstairs who need exercise. Get busy and talk."

Carmady said: "Yeah-but your three boys are downstairs." He slipped
the handkerchief inside his coat. His hand came out with the blued gun in it. He
said: "Take that Luger by the barrel and push it across the table so I can
reach it."

Conant didn't move. His eyes narrowed to slits. His hard mouth jerked the
cigarette in it once. He didn't touch the Luger. After a moment he said:
"Guess you know what will happen to you now."

Carmady shook his head slightly. He said: "Maybe I'm not particular
about that. If it does happen, you won't know anything about it."

Conant stared at him, didn't move. He stared at him for quite a long time,
stared at the blue gun. "Where did you get it? Didn't the heels frisk
you?"

Carmady said: "They did. This is Shenvair's gun. Your wop friend must
have kicked it behind the bathtub. Careless."

Conant reached two thick fingers forward and turned the Luger around and
pushed it to the far edge of the table. He nodded and said tonelessly: "I
lose this hand. I ought to have thought of that. That makes me do the
talking."

Jean Adrian came quickly across the room and stood at the end of the table.
Carmady reached forward across the chair and took the Luger in his left hand and
slipped it down into his overcoat pocket, kept his hand on it. He rested the
hand holding the blue gun on the top of the chair.

Jean Adrian said: "Who is this man?"

"Doll Conant, a local bigtimer. Senator John Myerson Courtway is his
pipe line into the state senate. And Senator Courtway, angel, is the man in your
photo frame on your desk. The man you said was your father, that you said was
dead."

The girl said very quietly: "He is my father. I knew he wasn't dead. I'm
blackmailing him-for a hundred grand. Shenvair and Targo and I. He never married
my mother, so I'm illegitimate. But I'm still his child. I have rights and he
won't recognize them. He treated my mother abominably, left her without a
nickel. He had detectives watch me for years. Shenvair was one of them. He
recognized my photos when I came here and met Targo. He remembered. He went up
to San Francisco and got a copy of my birth certificate. I have it here."

She fumbled at her bag, felt around in it, opened a small zipper pocket in
the lining. Her hand came out with a folded paper. She tossed it on the table.

Conant stared at her, reached a hand for the paper, spread it out and studied
it. He said slowly: "This doesn't prove anything."

Carmady took his left hand out of his pocket and reached for the paper.
Conant pushed it towards him.

It was a certified copy of a birth certificate, dated originally in 1912. It
recorded the birth of a girl child, Adriana Gianni Myerson, to John and Antonina
Gianni Myerson. Carmady dropped the paper again.

He said: "Adriana Gianni-Jean Adrian. Was that the tipoff, Conant?"

Conant shook his head. "Shenvair got cold feet. He tipped Courtway. He
was scared. That's why he had this hideout lined up. I thought that was why he
got killed. Targo couldn't have done it, because Targo's still in the can. Maybe
I had you wrong, Carmady."

Carmady stared at him woodenly, didn't say anything. Jean Adrian said:
"It's my fault. I'm the one that's to blame. It was pretty rotten. I see
that now. I want to see him and tell him I'm sorry and that he'll never hear
from me again. I want to make him promise he won't do anything to Duke Targo.
May I?"

Carmady said: "You can do anything you want to, angel. I have two guns
that say so. But why did you wait so long? And why didn t you go at him through
the courts? You re in show business. The publicity would have made you-even if
he beat you out."

The girl bit her lip, said in a low voice: "My mother never really knew
who he was, never knew his last name even. He was John Myerson to her. I didn't
know until I came here and happened to see a picture in the local paper. He had
changed, but I knew the face. And of course the first part of his name-"

Conant said sneeringly: "You didn't go at him openly because you knew
damn well you weren't his kid. That your mother just wished you on to him like
any cheap broad who sees herself out of a swell meal ticket. Courtway says he
can prove it, and that he's going to prove it and put you where you belong. And
believe me, sister, he's just the stiff-necked kind of sap who would kill
himself in public life raking up a twenty-year-old scandal to do that little
thing."

The big man spit his cigarette stub out viciously, added: "It cost me
money to put him where he is and I aim to keep him there. That's why I'm in it.
No dice, sister. I'm putting the pressure on. You're going to take a lot of air
and keep on taking it. As for your two-gun friend-maybe he didn't know, but he
knows now and that ties him up in the same package."

Carmady stared into the big man's eyes, said very softly: "That hood at
Cyrano's tonight-he wasn't your idea of putting on the pressure by any chance,
Conant, was he?"

Conant grinned harshly, shook his head. The door at the top of the stairs
opened a little, silently. Carmady didn't see it. He was staring at Conant. Jean
Adrian saw it.

Her eyes widened and she stepped back with a startled exclamation, that
jerked Carmady's eyes to her.

The albino stepped softly through the door with a gun leveled.

His red eyes glistened, his mouth was drawn wide in a snarling grin. He said:
"The door's kind of thin, boss. I listened. Okey? . . . Shed the heater,
rube, or I blow you both in half."

Carmady turned slightly and opened his right hand and let the blue gun bounce
on the thin carpet. He shrugged, spread his hands out wide, didn't look at Jean
Adrian.

The albino stepped clear of the door, came slowly forward and put his gun
against Carmady's back.

Conant stood up, came around the table, took the Luger out of Carmady's coat
pocket and hefted it. Without a word or change of expression he slammed it
against the side of Carmady's jaw.

Carmady sagged drunkenly, then went down on the floor on his side.

Jean Adrian screamed, clawed at Conant. He threw her off, changed the gun to
his left hand and slapped the side of her face with a hard palm.

"Pipe down, sister. You've had all your fun."

The albino went to the head of the stairs and called down it. The two other
gunmen came up into the room, stood grinning.

Carmady didn't move on the floor. After a little while Conant lit another
cigarette and rattled a knuckle on the table top beside the birth certificate.
He said gruffly: "She wants to see the old man. Okey, she can see him.
We'll all go see him. There's still something in this that stinks." He
raised his eyes, looked at the stocky man. "You and Lefty go downtown and
spring Targo, get him out to the Senator's place as soon as you can. Step on
it."

The two hoods went back down the stairs.

Conant looked down at Carmady, kicked him in the ribs lightly, kept on
kicking them until Carmady opened his eyes and stirred.

NINE

The car waited at the top of a hill, before a pair of tall wroughtiron gates,
inside which there was a lodge. A door of the lodge stood open and yellow light
framed a big man in an overcoat and pulled-down hat. He came forward slowly into
the rain, his hands down in his pockets.

The rain slithered about his feet and the albino leaned against the uprights
of the gate, clicking his teeth. The big man said: "What yuh want? I can
see yuh."

"Shake it up, rube. Mister Conant wants to call on your boss."

The man inside spat into the wet darkness. "So what? Know what time it
is?"

Conant opened the car door suddenly and went over to the gates. The rain made
noise between the car and the voices.

Carmady turned his head slowly and patted Jean Adrian's hand. She pushed his
hand away from her quickly.

Her voice said softly: "You fool-oh, you fool!"

Carmady sighed. "I'm having a swell time, angel. A swell time."

The man inside the gates took out keys on a long chain, unlocked the gates
and pushed them back until they clicked on the chocks. Conant and the albino
came back to the car.

Conant stood in the rain with a heel hooked on the running board. Carmady
took his big flask out of his pocket, felt it over to see if it was dented, then
unscrewed the top. He held it out towards the girl, said: "Have a little
bottle courage."

She didn't answer him, didn't move. He drank from the flask, put it away,
looked past Conant's broad back at acres of dripping trees, a cluster of lighted
windows that seemed to hang in the sky.

A car came up the hill stabbing the wet dark with its headlights, pulled
behind the sedan and stopped. Conant went over to it, put his head into it and
said something. The car backed, turned into the
driveway, and its lights splashed on retaining walls, disappeared, reappeared at
the top of the drive as a hard white oval against a stone porte-cochère.

Conant got into the sedan and the albino swung it into the driveway after the
other car. At the top, in a cement parking circle ringed with cypresses they all
got out.

At the top of steps a big door was open and a man in a bathrobe stood in it.
Targo, between two men who leaned hard against him, was halfway up the steps. He
was bareheaded and without an overcoat. His big body in the white coat looked
enormous between the two gunmen.

The rest of the party went up the steps and into the house and followed the
bathrobed butler down a hall lined with portraits of somebody's ancestors,
through a still oval foyer to another hall and into a paneled study with soft
lights and heavy drapes and deep leather chairs.

A man stood behind a big dark desk that was set in an alcove made by low,
outjutting bookcases. He was enormously tall and thin. His white hair was so
thick and fine that no single hair was visible in it. He had a small straight
bitter mouth, black eyes without depth in a white lined face. He stooped a
little and a blue corduroy bathrobe faced with satin was wrapped around his
almost freakish thinness.

The butler shut the door and Conant opened it again and jerked his chin at
the two men who had come in with Targo. They went out. The albino stepped behind
Targo and pushed him down into a chair. Targo looked dazed, stupid. There was a
smear of dirt on one side of his face and his eyes had a drugged look.

The girl went over to him quickly, said: "Oh, Duke-are you all right,
Duke?"

Targo blinked at her, half-grinned. "So you had to rat, huh? Skip it.
I'm fine." His voice had an unnatural sound.

Jcan Adrian went away from him and sat down and hunched herself together as
if she was cold.

The tall man stared coldly at everyone in the room in turn, then said
lifelessly: "Are these the blackmailers-and was it necessary to bring them
here in the middle of the night?"

Conant shook himself out of his coat, threw it on the floor behind a lamp. He
lit a fresh cigarette and stood spread-legged in the middle of the room, a big,
rough, rugged man very sure of himself. He said: "The girl wanted to see
you and tell you she was sorry and wants to play ball. The guy in the ice-cream
coat is Targo, the fighter. He got himself in a shooting scrape at a night spot
and acted so wild downtown they fed him sleep tablets to quiet him. The other
guy is Carmady, old Marcus Carmady's boy. I don't figure him yet."

Carmady said dryly: "I'm a private detective, Senator. I'm here in the
interests of my client, Miss Adrian." He laughed.

The girl looked at him suddenly, then looked at the floor.

Conant said gruffly. "Shenvair, the one you know about, got himself
bumped off. Not by us. That's still to straighten out."

The tall man nodded coldly. He sat down at his desk and picked up a white
quill pen, tickled one ear with it.

"And what is your idea of the way to handle this matter, Conant?"
he asked thinly.

Conant shrugged. "I'm a rough boy, but I'd handle this one legal. Talk
to the D.A., toss them in a coop on suspicion of extortion. Cook up a story for
the papers, then give it time to cool. Then dump these birds across the state
line and tell them not to come back-or else."

Senator Courtway moved the quill around to his other ear. "They could
attack me again, from a distance," he said icily. "I'm in favor of a
showdown, put them where they belong."

"You can't try them, Courtway. It would kill you politically."

"I'm tired of public life, Conant. I'll be glad to retire." The
tall thin man curved his mouth into a faint smile.

"The hell you are," Conant growled. He jerked his head around,
snapped: "Come here, sister."

J can Adrian stood up, came slowly across the room, stood in front of the
desk.

"Make her?" Conant snarled.

Courtway stared at the girl's set face for a long time, without a trace of
expression. He put his quill down on the desk, opened a drawer and took out a
photograph. He looked from the photo to the girl, back to the photo, said
tonelessly: This was taken a number of years ago, but there's a very strong
resemblance. I don't think I'd hesitate to say it's the same face."

He put the photo down on the desk and with the same unhurried motion took an
automatic out of the drawer and put it down on the desk beside the photo.

Conant stared at the gun. His mouth twisted. He said thickly: "You won't
need that, Senator, Listen, your showdown idea is all wrong. I'll get detailed
confessions from these people and we'll hold them. If they ever act up again,
it'll be time enough then to crack down with the big one."

Carmady smiled a little and walked across the carpet until he was near the
end of the desk. He said: "I'd like to see that photograph" and leaned
over suddenly and took it.

Courtway's thin hand dropped to the gun, then relaxed. He leaned back in his
chair and stared at Carmady.

Carmady said: "I like your showdown idea, Senator. It's clean and
straightforward and a wholesome change in policy from Mr. Conant. But it won't
work." He snicked a fingernail at the photo. "This has a superficial
resemblance, no more. I don't think it's the same girl at all myself. Her ears
are differently shaped and lower on her head. Her eyes are closer together than
Miss Adrian's eyes, the line of her jaw is longer. Those things don't change. So
what have you got? An extortion letter. Maybe, but you can't tie it to anyone or
you'd have done it already. The girl's name. Just coincidence. What else?"

Conant's face was granite hard, his mouth bitter. His voice shook a little
saying: "And how about that certificate the gal took out of her purse, wise
guy?"

Carmady smiled faintly, rubbed the side of his jaw with his fingertips.
"I thought you got that from Shenvair?" he said slyly. "And
Shenvair is dead.

Conant's face was a mask of fury. He balled his fist, took a jerky step
forward, "Why you-damn louse-"

Jean Adrian was leaning forward staring round-eyed at Carmady. Targo was
staring at him, with a loose grin, pale hard eyes. Courtway was staring at him.
There was no expression of any kind on Courtway's face. He sat cold, relaxed,
distant.

Carmady said slowly: "I'll tell you another reason why there'll be no
showdown. That shooting at Cyrano's. Those threats to make Targo drop an
unimportant fight. That hood that went to Miss Adrian's hotel room and sapped
her, left her lying on her doorway. Can't you tie all that in, Conant? I
can."

Courtway leaned forward suddenly and placed his hand on his gun, folded it
around the butt. His black eyes were holes in a white frozen face.

Conant didn't move, didn't speak.

Carmady went on: "Why did Targo get those threats, and after he didn't
drop the fight, why did a gun go to see him at Cyrano's, a night club, a very
bad place for that kind of play? Because at Cyrano's he was with the girl, and
Cyrano was his backer, and if anything happened at Cyrano's the law would get
the threat story before they had time to think of anything else. That's why. The
threats were a build-up for a killing. When the shooting came off Targo was to
be with the girl, so the hood could get the girl and it would look as if Targo
was the one he was after.

"He would have tried for Targo, too, of course, but above all he would
have got the girl. Because she was the dynamite behind this shakedown, without
her it meant nothing, and with her it could always be made over into a
legitimate paternity suit. If it didn't work the other way. You know about her
and about Targo, because Shenvair got cold feet and sold out. And Shenvair knew
about the hood-because when the hood showed, and I saw him-and Shenvair knew I
knew him, because he had heard me tell Targo about him-then Shenvair tried to
pick a drunken fight with me and keep me from trying to interfere."

Carmady stopped, rubbed the side of his head again, very slowly, very gently.
He watched Conant with an up-from-under look.

Conant said slowly, Very harshly: "I don't play those games, buddy.
Believe it or not-I don't."

Carmady said: "Listen. The hood could have killed the girl at the hotel
with his sap. He didn't because Targo wasn't there and the fight hadn't been
fought, and the build-up would have been all wasted. He went there to have a
close look at her, without make-up. And she was scared about something, and had
a gun with her. So he sapped her down and ran away. That visit was just a
finger."

Conant said again: "I don't play those games, buddy." Then he took
the Luger out of his pocket and held it down at his side.

Carmady shrugged, turned his head to stare at Senator Courtway.

"No, but he does," he said softly. "He had the motive, and the
play wouldn't look like him. He cooked it up with Shenvair-and if it went wrong,
as it did, Shenvair would have breezed and if the law got wise, big tough Doll
Conant is the boy whose nose would be in the mud."

Courtway smiled a little and said in an utterly dead voice: "The young
man is very ingenious, but surely-"

Targo stood up. His face was a stiff mask. His lips moved slowly and he said:
"It sounds pretty good to me. I think I'll twist your goddamn neck, Mister
Courtway."

The albino snarled, "Sit down, punk," and lifted his gun. Targo
turned slightly and slammed the albino on the jaw. He went over backwards,
smashed his head against the wall. The gun sailed along the floor from his limp
hand.

Targo started across the room.

Conant looked at him sidewise and didn't move. Targo went past him, almost
touching him. Conant didn't move a muscle. His big face was blank, his eyes
narrowed to a faint glitter between the heavy lids.

Nobody moved but Targo. Then Courtway lifted his gun and his finger whitened
on the trigger and the gun roared.

Carmady moved across the room very swiftly and stood in front of Jean Adrian,
between her and the rest of the room.

Targo looked down at his hands. His face twisted into a silly smile. He sat
down on the floor and pressed both his hands against his chest.

Courtway lifted his gun again and then Conant moved. The Luger jerked up,
flamed twice. Blood flowed down Courtway's hand. His gun fell behind his desk.
His long body seemed to swoop down after the gun. Itjackknifed until only his
shoulders showed humped above the line of the desk.

Conant said: "Stand up and take it, you goddamn doublecrossing
swine!"

There was a shot behind the desk. Courtway's shoulders went down out of
sight.

After a moment Conant went around behind the desk, stopped, straightened.

"He ate one," he said very calmly. "Through the mouth . And I
lose me a nice clean senator."

Targo took his hands from his chest and fell over sidewise on the floor and
lay still.

The door of the room slammed open. The butler stood in it, tousle-headed, his
mouth gaping. He tried to say something, saw the gun in Conant's hand, saw Targo
slumped on the floor. He didn't say anything.

The albino was getting to his feet, rubbing his chin, feeling his teeth,
shaking his head. He went slowly along the wall and gathered up his gun.

Conant snarled at him: "Swell gut you turned out to be. Get on the
phone. Get Malloy, the night captain-and snap it up!"

Carmady turned, put his hand down and lifted Jean Adrian's cold chin.

"It's getting light, angel. And I think the rain has stopped," he
said slowly. He pulled his inevitable flask out. "Let's take a drink-to
Mister Targo."

The girl shook her head, covered her face with her hands.

After a long time there were sirens.

TEN

The slim, tired-looking kid in the pale and silver of the Carondelet held his
white glove in front of the closing doors and said: "Corky's boils is
better, but he didn't come to work, Mister Carmady. Tony the bell captain ain't
showed this morning neither. Pretty soft for some guys."

Carmady stood close to Jean Adrian in the corner of the car. They were alone
in it. He said: "That's what you think."

The boy turned red. Carmady moved over and patted his shoulder, said:
"Don't mind me, son. I've been up all night with a sick friend. Here, buy
yourself a second breakfast."

"Jeeze, Mister Carmady, I didn't mean-"

The doors opened at nine and they went down the corridor to 914. Carmady took
the key and opened the door, put the key on the inside, held the door, said:
"Get some sleep and wake up with your fist in your eye. Take my flask and
get a mild toot on. Do you good."

The girl went in through the door, said over her shoulder: "I don't want
liquor. Come in a minute. There's something I want to tell you."

He shut the door and followed her in. A bright bar of sunlight lay across the
carpet all the way to the davenport. He lit a cigarette and stared at it.

Jean Adrian sat down and jerked her hat off and rumpled her hair. She was
silent a moment, then she said slowly, carefully: "It was swell of you to
go to all that trouble for me. I don't know why you should do it."

Carmady said: "I can think of a couple of reasons, but they didn't keep
Targo from getting killed, and that was my fault in a way. Then in another way
it wasn't, I didn't ask him to twist Senator Courtway's neck."

The girl said: "You think you're hard-boiled but you're just a big slob
that argues himself into a jam for the first tramp he finds in trouble. Forget
it. Forget Targo and forget me. Neither of us was worth any part of your time, I
wanted to tell you that because I'll be going away as soon as they let me, and I
won't be seeing you any more. This is goodbye."

Carmady nodded, stared at the sun on the carpet. The girl went on: "It's
a little hard to tell. I'm not looking for sympathy when I say I'm a tramp. I've
smothered in too many hall bedrooms, stripped in too many filthy dressing rooms,
missed too many meals, told too many lies to be anything else. That's why I
wouldn't want to have anything to do with you, ever."

Carmady said: "I like the way you tell it. Go on."

She looked at him quickly, looked away again. "I'm not the Gianni girl.
You guessed that. But I knew her. We did a cheap sister act together when they
still did sister acts. Ada and Jean Adrian. We made up our names from hers. That
flopped, and we went in a road show and that flopped too. In New Orleans. The
going was a little too rough for her. She swallowed bichloride. I kept her
photos because I knew her story. And looking at that thin cold guy and thinking
what he could have done for her I got to hate him. She was his kid all right.
Don't ever think she wasn't. I even wrote letters to him, asking for help for
her, just a little help, signing her name. But they didn't get any answer. I got
to hate him so much I wanted to do something to him, after she took the
bichloride. So I came out here when I got a stake."

She stopped talking and laced her fingers together tightly, then pulled them
apart violently, as if she wanted to hurt herself. She went on: "I met
Targo through Cyrano and Shenvair through him. Shenvair knew the photos. He'd
worked once for an agency in Frisco that was hired to watch Ada. You know all
the rest of it."

Carmady said: "It sounds pretty good. I wondered why the touch wasn't
made sooner. Do you want me to think you didn't want his money?"

"No. I'd have taken his money all right. But that wasn't what I wanted
most. I said I was a tramp."

Carmady smiled very faintly and said: "You don't know a lot about
tramps, angel. You made an illegitimate pass and you got caught. That's that,
but the money wouldn't have done you any good. It would have been dirty money. I
know."

She looked up at him, stared at him. He touched the side of his face and
winced and said: "I know because that's the kind of money mine is. My dad
made it out of crooked sewerage and paving contracts, out of gambling
concessions, appointment pay-offs, even vice, I daresay. He made it every rotten
way there is to make money in city politics. And when it was made and there was
nothing left to do but sit and look at it, he died and left it to me. It hasn't
brought me any fun either. I always hope it's going to, but it never does.
Because I'm his pup, his blood, reared in the same gutter. I'm worse than a
tramp, angel. I'm a guy that lives on crooked dough and doesn't even do his own
stealing."

He stopped, flicked ash on the carpet, straightened his hat on his head.

"Think that over, and don't run too far, because I have all the time in
the world and it wouldn't do you any good. It would be so much more fun to run
away together."

He went a little way towards the door, stood looking down at the sunlight on
the carpet, looked back at her quickly and then went on out.

When the door shut she stood up and went into the bedroom and lay down on the
bed just as she was, with her coat on, She stared at the ceiling. After a long
time she smiled. In the middle of the smile she fell asleep.